QUITO - The Ecuadorian government today announced that it is awaiting response from Chevron on the decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court which ordered the Andean country to pay the U.S. multinational oil company $96 million.

Ecuador's president Rafael Correa told foreign reporters that he will wait for the response from Chevron to analyze the next steps because the country still holds a seizure order against Chevron in another pollution case.

"We must first see if they charge us, we must see if they have the courage to charge us after having caused so much damage to the country," said Correa who questioned the US Supreme Court's rejection of an appeal of it's decision.

The case, known as 'Chevron II' refers to a lawsuit filed before arbitration tribunals by the oil company against Ecuador for denial of justice in some processes presented while the predecessor of Chevron, Texaco Petroleum Co., operated in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador between 1964 and 1990.

Correa ridiculed that "this is the world" today because "with all the lawyers that Chevron has, their lawsuits end quickly in their favor and they block the other (other cases against the company) by all means."

He referred to a sentence imposed by the Ecuadorian courts on Chevron to pay $9.5 billion for environmental damages in the Amazon, but Chevron considered the sentence a plot against the company and thus refused to comply.

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